Thursday, October 23, 2008

90 Day Men - 1975 - 1997 - 1978

90 Day Men's '1975-1997-1978'

If 90 Day Men is a name unfamiliar to you I suggest that you immediately download 'To Everybody' and 'Panda Park'. Uniquely progressive 90 Day Men over their three album career produced a variety of sounds and coming off somewhat as a psychedelic post-hardcore band. '1975-1997-1978' is devoid of all those fancy genre names though acting somewhat as the strict derivative of Louisville and the respective Chicago math rock scenes. 'Sink Potemken' comes off much like a Slint b-side. Opener 'My Trip to Venus' foreshadows the band's pop sensibility anchoring everything dissonant and unpleasant out of the math rock genre and coming off as entirely beautiful. Reference points are made on 'Streamlines and Breadwinners' to the legendary Vidablue or Ten Grand how ever you wish to label them. Conclusion 'Hey, Citronella!' reveals the progressive tendencies that the band would fully build on with their first LP. Fantastic EP and definitely a great foreshadow for the rest of the band's career.

90 Day Men

'Sweater Queen' reminds me of a mid '90s emo song. The band comes off sounding like a more placcid Maximillian Colby and that is probably a good description for this entire album. Although I think it would certainly be a stretch to label the band as 'emo', they certainly ride that line between post-hardcore and emo very well.

4 comments:

I really like the one particular song that sounds like Maximillian Colby (maybe Sleepytime Trio migt be a better comparison for some of it at least). They really get the energy of the sound down pat, it's almost spooky. And the song after it reminds me of Repeater-era Fugazi.